Owning materials from an asteroid now legal in United States | Hacker News Reader

Owning materials from an asteroid now legal in United States

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63 points6502nerdface15 comments

How does the United States have the authority to set laws governing asteroids? What if I am not in the US, not a US citizen, and launch a spacecraft from somewhere other than the US and go ravage some asteroids for resources? Why is this not an international treaty jointly made by at least the space-capable nations?

Whoa OK well then by that line who said Earth creatures get to claim non-Earth objects?

Whomever has the biggest space weapons.

Those laws don't govern asteroids, they govern people. If you're not subject to US law, disregard it all you like.

The US is only governing its own citizens and claiming the rule and responsibility to enforce its decisions over them. It's the same as if they were telling US citizens what they can own if they do activities in international waters. Your what-if answer depends on your country.

> The US is only governing its own citizens and claiming the rule and responsibility to enforce its decisions over them.

How I wish that were true.

They don't, really. This is basically saying they won't take legal action against their citizen for owning or trying to obtain said materials.

This law doesn't give ownership of the asteroid, it gives ownership of the mined resources (emphasis mine):

> Any asteroid resources obtained in outer space are the property of the entity that obtained them, which shall be entitled to all property rights to them, consistent with applicable federal law and existing international obligations.

Was there already law someplace that addressed such things as not eligible for ownership? If not, why would this not fit under marine salvage laws?

Yes, previous law and treaty has generally established that there are no private property rights, ownership, or sovereignty in space.

To be fair, all of this means government protection against harmful, unfair action against you.

Even if they don't sanction it, can they actually stop you from doing as you please with an asteroid, obviously assuming you somehow had the resources? I mean, would they actually block a private launch if the company behind it showed technical capability to do this in some kind of responsible way? Who cares about somebody stealing it or somehow ripping you off in your ownership of this thing, how would that come into play here?

Sorry about the internet tone - not meaning to sound like I'm arguing, I am genuinely asking!

Even if they don't sanction it, can they actually stop you from doing as you please with an asteroid

Well they could fine you / put you in Jail here on earth. The state can't physically prevent you from murdering people in most cases, for example, but they can impose penalties when you do it. A commercial mining venture is unlikely to be successful if the government of its home country says what it is doing is illegal.

Fair. Has it been made explicitly illegal anywhere, or just not explicitly legal? Sorry for being difficult.

> 'Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means'.

Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty [0]

The whole treaty is pretty vague and mostly deals with access to objects and national claims of ownership preventing access to objects. Article 9 might apply here but it's pretty loosely worded too and basically says exploration will be conducted "with due regard to the corresponding interests of all other State Parties to the Treaty" and avoid harmful contamination.

Not sure if this qualifies as allowing national appropriation, all I've seen is that this applies to the bits they pull out not giving ownership to the body itself. There will probably be challenges once someone actually tries to go out and actually mine one. Article 9 might make better fodder for that though.

[0] http://www.unoosa.org/pdf/gares/ARES_21_2222E.pdf

The only groups I can imagine challenging the mining itself would be private environmentalist groups (and even then, of the environmentalists who care at all, this would still be a low priority), and they do not have standing to challenge it.

In order for a state to care about challenging it, I suspect we would need to states to want to mine at the same location, in large enough quantities that they might get in each others way, or deplete the resource.

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